Apple Mac Mini 2010 RAM Upgrade

The 2010 Mac Mini became the first Mac I've owned when I purchased it in September of 2010. I've really liked it ever since because it's small and doesn't take much room on my desk. A very nice innovation since it's a unibody machine and doesn't have overheating issues. It is very quiet too and works just like any desktop should. I purchased the 2.4GHz model with a 320GB hard drive and 2GB RAM.

Lately I have been contemplating upgrading the RAM to its full 8GB capacity. Flash player and Java have been acting up on me and I didn't exactly know if it was because of insufficient RAM. So when I opened up the Activity Monitor it showed I only had about 200MB of free RAM at one point.
I had Norton Internet Security running in the background and a few other applications like LogMeIn, Air Video server and Air Mouse. These are things I use every now and then either when I'm home or on the go, remotely. Plus the Mac Mini is my media hub and I have two Apple TVs that access my media from the 2TB USB drive connected to it. All these processes obviously require enough RAM to function seamlessly. So a RAM upgrade felt necessary.

Mushkin DDR3 PC-8500 SO-DIMM RAM

Prices of DDR3 PC-8500 SO-DIMM 1066MHz RAM are still quite high, hovering over the $100 mark. I found 8GB (2x4GB) RAM on Newegg by Mushkin for $129 with a 10% OFF coupon which dropped it to around $115. It's the lowest price I could find last week. There was another website that offered to buy back the 2GB RAM I have at the moment for $15 and the difference I had to pay for 8GB was $110. Sure it's $5 cheaper but I didn't want to deal with the hassle of having to mail the RAM to them and all that. I'm quite sure it's a reliable company that offers the deal because the recommendation came from a reliable source. So I settled on the Newegg offer and I'm quite happy I did because it's been more than a week since I purchased the RAM for that price and current prices are still a little more than what I paid.

I'm beginning to like Newegg a lot more than I did before because their shipping service is pretty darn good. I got the RAM in 2 days and for free shipping that's awesome. Installation was a breeze too. The RAM is a user-serviceable part on the new Mac Mini so there's no risk of voiding the warranty. Just a twist of the protective cover on the undersurface of the Mini and voila, the RAM is right there. Pop it out by releasing the tabs and push the new RAM in, one at a time as it locks into place. Twist the cover back on and I was up and running again.

What a huge difference RAM makes! My Mac Mini now runs like a jungle cat! Just the way it's supposed to. Everything works seamlessly. I use TweetDeck for twitter which uses Adobe Air which is a resource-hungry application and even that works beautifully. I am very pleased with the upgrade.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!